IT’SNOTHARDDRAWINGTHINPIPPLE

Ok, it’s another post about those goddam fashion designer idiots. Sue me for being repetitive, why don’t you?

It’s the time of year that we normal-sized, post-children, post-forty, living-life-beyond-rice-cakes types can embrace proper shoes and tights again, no more trying to cope with flimsy sundresses or shorts and be constantly worrying about shaved legs and a mild case of the bingo-wings.  We can get back to proper dresses, with sleeves, cardigans, feeling comfortable because we don’t have to expose most of our flesh because of the heat.

I look at my wardrobe and despair.

I have dresses, of course. Most of them are getting on a bit because they are such rare finds that I have to treasure them. Some are very specifically “going to weddings and dos” dresses.  I need more dresses.  I really can’t spend another winter in trousers because I look horrible in most trousers (funny legs, square arse) and I don’t have nearly enough dresses to cope with the daily demands of making me look civilized, clean, powerful, sexy, artistic, respectable and interesting (which is the secondary objective of clothes, the primary, obviously, being to give us pockets to keep our phones in, no… wait, that’s what bras are for…).

So, I need to go shopping.  I have finally learnt my lesson about dress shopping in Portugal, so I haven’t actually left the house yet. Dress shopping in Portugal is a pointless exercise if you’re my size (in all directions) and you don’t like nasty frilly sparkly shit and looking really overdressed, so online shopping it is.  I spent a couple of hours yesterday trawling the sea of rubbish that is clothes shopping online and what did I catch?

• A gamtrillion tarty, above-the-knee dresses for knitting needle shaped pre-adolescents.
• Horrible polka dotted shirt dresses in polyester for old ladies.
• Outrageously expensive, very beautiful, elegant clothes for “real” women, undoubtably helped to look beautiful by an insanely beautiful six foot tall amazonian, who is not particularly “real”.  I need “real” clothes for “real” day to day living, that don’t cost a “real” shitload of money.
• Mary Portas’ horrible clothes (part of her crusade to make over forties look good) are good, for anyone over forty who is as thin as Mary Portas, and wants to look exactly like Mary Portas. I DON’T WANT THAT HORRIBLE ORANGE BOB, MARY.
• Vintage dress shops that regard the eighties (and all the nasty crap they entailed) as vintage.
• A shitload of leopard skin.
• Websites for euphemistically “curvy” ladies full of photographs of positively un-curvy ladies modelling ugly flowery dresses, or enormous sweater dresses and those shapeless bin bag shaped dresses… and one hell of a lot of BLOUSY.
• Dresses touted as “vintage style”, ie. 30s, 40s, 50s…. which are as vintage as my breakfast…. they are almost all ABOVE THE KNEE.  I’d like to remind them that knees were significantly well covered until the 60s, and it’s not just a pathetic attempt at an old fashioned neckline that makes a dress “vintage”.
• Jersey and knitwear dresses for big women, we, the big women who need holding up and holding in bit being sold a stretchy bag to chuck ourselves into.

I could go on for hours hating all the crap I found.  But I’ll sum it up here:

• If you can afford to spend £250 on a day dress, you’ll probably be fine. Carry on.
• If you are a size between “stick” and “perfect”, carry on.
• If you are a bit chunky (by which I mean, you have boobs, curves, a tummy, an arse or any combination of these perfectly normal body parts of a normal woman who doesn’t have the time nor the excess vanity to dedicate most of her time to getting rid of them) you will find plenty, as long as you want to look tacky, frumpy, fatter than you are, shorter than you are or blousy. Carry On.
• If you have good taste, need to look reasonably smart but different (for god’s sake, please, different), but have a few bits of your body that really need to be covered up and/or held in, because we cannot help but be judged unfairly when we are surrounded by images of models who have all recently died of starvation…. THEN YOU CONTINUED TO BE UTTERLY SCREWED.

The reason for this state of  affairs lies in part with us laydees with racks and botts and thighs and tummies, who don’t want to look like curvy blousy tarts or baked potatoes in a sack, for not shouting loud enough.   But we have our real lives to be getting on with, and it’s not exactly “chain yourself to the railings/throw yourself under a horse” important, and we have other priorities, like keeping everyone fed, clothed and getting some work done.

The bigger fault lies with the retailers, the advertisers, and of course, the designers, who, it seems, are all conspiring to make you and me look like shit.

I’m going to let you into a little secret.

Fashion designers aren’t ALL woman hating shitheads (though, I’m seeking some statistics to prove that), they just aren’t very good at drawing.  Nor are they very good at puzzles.  If you have a modicum of artistic talent, it is extraordinarily easy to draw a stylized thin doll-like thing, far easier than it is to draw a normal shaped woman.  It is easier than that, even, to draw stylized clothes onto that skinny stick creature…. and for those clothes to look “good”.

Here, i’ll prove it, with a drawing that took me about twenty three seconds to do.  I could smear a streak of poo across one of these “models” and it would look “good” as an outfit.

Now, try drawing something onto this following model (very VERY loosely based on me).  It would take more than twenty-three seconds to do something interesting, elegant, artistic, edgy, different or fun, wouldn’t it?

I’ve threatened this a dozen times, but now, I’m going to get on and try to do it this time.  I’m going to design a set of dresses for proper shapeful women, i.e. me,  that won’t make them, i.e. me, look shit.  I’ll make the clothes (yes, I do know how), then get them properly photographed (already booked!) and if anyone else likes them, I’ll sell you the pattern… or even the clothes. Let’s see.  This may be a bit of a pipe dream, but, goddamit, I’m fed up with being made to feel like a worthless member of the world, when actually, I’m not, I’m brilliant. This will all take a while, because I’m up to my ears, but I hope that by next autumn, I can stop complaining about having nothing to wear.

read also:

http://lucypepper.com/wpr/2009/09/fashion-designers-are-vacuous-idiots/

http://lucypepper.com/wpr/2010/10/banging-on/

(sadly without their comments, which were lost in the latest move)